Black Water Ops is holding a screenshot contest – win and you could get yourself some MS points or a LIVE subscription. Check their site for details! Thanks to Bungie’s Comm Chatter for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 19:25:06 UTC)

bs angel is doing her best to help out with the difficult task of finding folks to play Firefight with – swing by this post to add your gamertag, and some information about when you like to play. She’s hoping that the list will end up being useful for folks trying to hook up with partners.(Louis Wu 17:57:05 UTC)

Crab has been busy – but he managed to whip up a single panoramic ODST shot. It’s… gorgeous. (If you haven’t finished the game, it could be considered to contain spoilers.)(Louis Wu 17:52:20 UTC)

A Baked Grunt whipped up a few ODST panoramas – swing by Bungie.net for links! (Louis Wu 17:12:20 UTC)

Lots and lots of people are sending us worried notes after having read the latest post over at Ascendant Justice. Both Vociferous and Cocopjojo have been hired by 343 Industries recently, and because of this, they’re both stepping away from their work on AJ. While you should be sad that AJ will not be producing any more fascinating analyses of the Halo universe, do not worry – both of these minds are now on the inside, working on the future of the Halo franchise. And should the day come when Jironimo no longer desires to host the existing AJ content, I’ve already put forth an offer to host a mirror – so the existing articles aren’t going anywhere.(Louis Wu 16:39:23 UTC)

Want to see a really cool Spartan Birthday Cake? Swing by Hawty McBloggy’s. That TTL Dren is one lucky guy!(Louis Wu 16:30:31 UTC)

Five new screens have popped up from the Bones-created episode of Halo Legends (1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5) – no word on release dates yet, though.(Louis Wu 16:16:51 UTC)

Red vs Blue Recreation Chapter 15 (Watch the Flank) ups the tension a bit – Simmons and Lopez have trouble at Valhalla, while the rest of the crew find out how bad a storyteller Caboose can be. I kinda like the new Church.(Louis Wu 16:15:41 UTC)

XerxdeeJ stopped in with word of a couple of new articles available at Tied the Leader – ‘Don’t Burn the Love Letter‘ explains how Bungie made ODST just for you, and ‘Join Us. Stop Them.‘ looks at the brilliance of the ODST marketing campaign. Great reads, both!(Louis Wu 15:47:27 UTC)

CVG grabbed a bit out of the latest OXM UK issue where Joe Staten explained that Bungie was happy to tie together various tidbits from Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach – it’s unclear how many of them will come to fruition, but the seeds have been sown, and Bungie is free to harvest as much of the goodness as they choose.(Louis Wu 15:42:14 UTC)

Eurogamer posted an article called ‘Off the Map‘ – it looks at a few games that contain levels designed to confuse the player, rather than help him get from point A to point B. Page 2 looks at 343 Guilty Spark, from the first Halo. Overall, it’s a great read, and makes me want to go back and play some of these games! Thanks, William Sullivan-Angulo.(Louis Wu 15:39:48 UTC)

Microsoft has responded to the ‘Unreadable Disc’ issue that some gamers have encountered with ODST – they’ve told Eurogamer that they “are aware of a very small number of people who are reporting they can’t play the game”, and that they “are looking into it, but at this point it doesn’t appear to be a widespread issue.” Joystiq weighed in, saying that when they surveyed their readers, asking if the players “had technical issues” with their copy of ODST – nearly a third of the 5600 respondents said “yes”. Joystiq suggests that the problem is bigger than Microsoft is letting on. (Something to keep in mind – many, many MANY people are having trouble with LIVE-based Firefight – in fact, I don’t think I’ve talked to ANYONE who has not experienced SOME issue with it – and it’s quite possible that many of the people who answered Joystiq’s poll were not talking about disc read errors when they said that they’d experienced technical issues with ODST.)(Louis Wu 15:32:28 UTC)